The person you'll actually be working with

I'm Lydia Sinclair. I registered ProTalent in the week of Christmas 2009, at the tail end of the deepest recession since the war, when permanent hiring had all but stopped and starting a recruitment business was a demonstrably bad idea.

The economy had actually turned a corner by then. Nobody knew that for another month.

I started anyway because the thing I wanted to build didn't exist and waiting for a better year had stopped feeling like a plan.

If you ring, you get me. Not always straight away, because sometimes I'm with someone else and you'll get my voicemail. But the call back comes from me, and if you brief a role I'm the one who works it. There's no team behind me picking up the bits I don't fancy, and no account manager who takes over once the contract is signed. That is deliberate, and it's worth explaining why.

Why I started it

I was a Managing Consultant at an international recruitment agency, and later at a small boutique firm. By then I'd spent long enough in recruitment to be properly irritated by something.

The market treated "accounting and finance" as one thing. Practice got lumped in with industry and treated as a stepping stone to somewhere better. It isn't. A twelve-partner independent in Lewes and a PE-backed group in the City are not the same employer, and an audit senior is not an interchangeable unit of finance staff. Recruiters who covered everything understood none of it properly.

So I built a business that does one thing. Sixteen years later it still only does that one thing.

Practice, and nothing else

Audit, tax, accounts, payroll, bookkeeping, outsourcing, advisory, corporate finance, insolvency. Trainee through to partner. I only take commerce and industry work when it's a senior finance appointment, and I don't do anything outside accountancy.

Specialising this narrowly means knowing things a generalist can't. Which firms are growing and which are quietly losing people. What a client manager at a ten-partner independent actually earns, as opposed to what the advert says. Why a candidate turned a firm down two years ago, and whether that reason still applies.

Twenty-one years of those conversations adds up to something you can't buy or shortcut.

One desk, a small number of roles

Most agencies measure a consultant by how many vacancies they're juggling. I'd rather be judged on how many close.

ProTalent has been bigger than this. I've had a team, an office, the lot. Growth is the assumed direction of travel in recruitment and for a long time I assumed it too. What I found is that the business gets better as it gets more focused, not as it gets larger, and the clients who value what I do value it because it's me doing it.

So I work a limited number of assignments at a time, and I turn work down when I can't do it justice or when I'm not the right person for it. If a role sits outside my expertise, or you'd be better served by someone with a different network, I'll say so on the first call rather than take the brief and hope.

What I won't do

I don't headhunt from my clients. If your firm is on my books, nobody who works for you will get a call from me about a job somewhere else. Not after twelve months, not quietly, not ever.

What I can't do is stop someone applying, and I won't pretend otherwise. If one of your people approaches me under their own steam, I'll talk to them. They're entitled to run their own career, and turning them away wouldn't keep them anyway. But the approach will never have come from me.

That distinction matters more than the blanket promise some recruiters make, because a blanket promise is one nobody can actually keep. What you can hold me to is that I will never go looking.

I also won't send a CV I haven't discussed with the candidate first, put someone forward for a role I don't think suits them, or tell you a search is going well when it isn't.

Why B Corp™

Because I care.

That sounds like the sort of thing everyone says, so here's what it means in practice. ProTalent certified as a B Corporation in January 2026, which took the best part of a year and involved someone else going through the business properly rather than taking my word for any of it. Pay. Supplier terms. Environmental impact. How candidates are treated whether or not they get the job.

I care about people, and recruitment is an industry that can be careless with them. I care about the environment and what we leave behind. And I care, probably more than is good for me, about doing things properly.

Certification means those things get measured rather than claimed. You can see ProTalent's B Corp profile and score for yourself. Fellow B Corps receive an automatic 10% discount with ProTalent because I'd rather work with businesses that have made the same commitment.

I'm also a REC member with Fellowship status, and ProTalent is an accredited Living Wage employer.

Learn more at rec.uk.com, bcorp.com and livingwage.org.uk

Outside the desk

I'm mum to twin daughters, which is the best job I've got and the one I'm least qualified for.

The rest of the time I'm usually outside or in a gym. CrossFit, paddleboarding, anything that involves water. Scuba diving and travel most of all. I'm sure I was meant to be born a mermaid!

I'm better at the outdoors than I am at sitting still.

Talk to me

If you're hiring and you're not sure whether it needs an advert, a search, or a conversation about whether the role works at all, that call is free and takes fifteen minutes.

Lydia Sinclair FREC

Founder and Managing Director

lydia@protalent.co

01273 491 852